And then it was time. He lowered the head again so that her ass was angled just right. He seemed to understand that she was at ease, that she wanted him to dominate her, and so when he finally placed his well-lubed cock at the entrance to her tight pink hole and she stiffened, he smacked her ass.
"None of that, now! Keep this ass relaxed, understand?" He didn't wait for her to answer before pressing forward. She gasped as the stiff ring began to yield to something much bigger than three fingers.
"Push out!" he ordered.
She obeyed and was rewarded with the most incredible burning pain as the entire head of his cock breeched the muscle. She cried out in agony. He stilled. She heard him mutter something that was probably a prayer that she wouldn't hate him later, and he pushed on. The burning pain engulfed her, different than anything she'd ever felt, and sending her deeper into her submissive space than she'd ever been before. She screamed and pulled at her bindings frantically as he slid in all the way, and then she felt him leaning against her, murmuring words of comfort, and placing kisses on her skin. The pain eased a bit, enough for her to catch her breath.
"Are you all right?" he asked, the concern and regret in his voice as clear as a flashing sign.
"Yes!" she sobbed. "Yes! Thank you. Thank you. I'm okay."
"I'll pull out gently now. It will feel strange."
"Aren't you going to fuck me?" She hadn't come this far to stop now!
There was another silence. Then, in a tone of voice that told her that the master hadn't gone away, he said, "Yes. I'm going to fuck you hard."
He pulled almost all the way out, the strangest feeling ever, and then pushed back in. The pain came rushing back, but not as intense this time. His movements grew faster and surer and it wasn't long before he was fucking her hard and fast. She grunted and groaned each time he hit bottom, reveling in the strange and exquisite pain-that-was-pleasure, and noting with a small side part of her brain that she probably could have come with the merest brush of a finger on her clit. But that was for another time.
He started to tremble and the next time he pushed in he grabbed her hips to pull himself as deep into her as he could. He stiffened and cried out, and she felt the warm sticky fluid wash into her bowels. The tremors continued until at last he collapsed onto her back, his breathing erratic.
"Oh, fuck, Lydia. Oh, fuck. You are amazing." He pushed himself to his feet, and a moment later, all her straps were free and the head of the bench was level and flat again. She crawled backwards off of it, stiff, but almost more steady on her feet than he was. Together they stumbled to the bed, arms entwined, and fell down together. He pulled her into his arms and held her tight, and without needing to say anything more they drifted off to sleep.
Treasure Found
Lydia was quiet the next day down in the archives. James, too, was distracted, thinking more about how quickly she'd come to mean so much to him and how bleak the future looked without her – unless he could find a way to take her with him. He mentally shook his head. A few days ago, renting a slave had sent him into paroxysms of guilt. Now he was trying to figure out how to buy one.
The secret room of books weighed heavily on him, too. What should they do? Who could they tell? He was a stranger on this world; if there was any organized opposition to this government, it was a well-kept secret, and one that James would not likely come across. Should Lydia just keep the secret with her, and use it someday if she had the chance? They'd woken up later last night, and after taking a quick shower together, he'd settled her back to sleep, but had lain awake himself for hours trying to see a way out of this. A way that freed Lydia.
Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, after a fruitless morning and a quiet lunch in the park, they found their first hint. He was plodding through an old Br'ini medical text, he and Lydia translating word after word of the scientific language with the help of a dictionary, when they came upon one case study of a young man with a brain injury. The doctor had casually noted that he'd previously been treated on another planet with a Midrosian folk remedy to ease his nightmares after a near-death experience in a space ship when he was a boy.
"Oblita?" Lydia breathed, "being used on another planet?"
"That's what it looks like," James said. He continued to read, hoping there was more, but there wasn't.
Lydia was giddy nonetheless. "We're going to find it! I just know it!" She hugged her arms around her waist and jumped up and down.
"Lydia," James' voice was serious, "this is exciting, yes, but we're not much closer. Remember, we've only found a few Eluiim folk medicine books, and none of them had anything in there. We might not find anything more for weeks."
His statement hung in the air between them. He saw Lydia's excitement vanish. There would be no "weeks" for them, together. In four days, she'd be back with her master, pretending she hadn't seen the wonders her life might have held if she had been born somewhere else, with someone who recognized her intelligence.
He saw her pull into herself as clearly as if she'd drawn a cloak around her skin.
"Lydia." He reached for her hand, but she moved away.
"Don't, James. Don't. I don't think I could stand it if you touched me right now. I need to keep myself together, because I have no intention of losing a single moment of this week to crying or self-pity." It was a brave statement made by someone trained never to resist a man, and his heart almost broke that he'd opened her up and made her this vulnerable.
"Sir, may I go back to the other room for a while?"
The main room was a soulless place when she wasn't there with him, but he nodded.
She barely made it back through the hidden door before she fell apart, despite what she'd said to James. She slumped down on the floor and sobbed and wailed and beat on the walls with her fists. But she only indulged for five minutes before she forced her feelings back into a corner of her mind. She was determined that if she only had three more days, she'd put every waking moment into looking for the answer. He needed someone who was fluent in Eluiim to be in here.
And if she were honest, she also wanted to soak up information she'd probably never have access to for the rest of her life.
Since they couldn't find a catalog, they'd been just wandering up and down the rows. She decided she'd be more methodical. First shelf, top row, first book, work her way across and down, and not get distracted by anything no matter how interesting. That would be tough.
She pulled the only chair in the room over to the first shelf and stood on it to get to the top of the bookcase. And depressingly, the first book was a nondescript faded blue book with no title. She couldn't skip past it quickly; she was going to have to pull it out to see what it held. She hoped there weren't too many like this. With a sigh she pulled it down and opened it up – and dropped it down to the floor in shock.
She scrambled off the chair and down to the floor. She didn't bother to pick the book up and move – she dropped to the floor and opened it up again. It was not a textbook, or a storybook. Every word was written in beautiful script. Every page had a date. It was a diary.
She knew this was the answer to the what and why of this room. She just knew it. She should pick it up and take it back to James, and she would – in a little while. But she had a feeling this was meant to be read by someone like her – a woman.
~ "I'm starting this journal because, well, as an ancient philosopher once said, we live in interesting times. I don't like the way our world is progressing and I'm worried that there won't be any accurate accounts of what's been going on. Even now, recent history is being rewritten into a version that is unrecognizable by those of us who lived through it.
What spurred my decision to record the facts? My daughter came home from school today and told me they'd been learning about the bloody riots thirteen years ago outside the main ministries building. She said that women had gathered there to declare that if the government didn't repeal certain laws, they would no longer have sex with men or get pregnant, a
nd they didn't care if humans died out on Midros. She said they started a bloody uprising that the government had no choice but to put down. The reason for the rebellion, the laws that were being protested, had been dismissed as irrelevant by the teacher.
But I was at those demonstrations. I know the truth. The mostly male government had voted the day before that they believed that women's access to birth control allowed them to behave in irresponsible and immoral ways, so from then on only men would be permitted to give or withhold it from their partners. The decision to have, or not have children, no longer belonged to women.
There was no bloody uprising. We occupied the front lawn of the building for several months until the police broke it up with riot gear in the middle of the night, and three unarmed women were killed.
Less than a year later, the government passed a law declaring that if a husband forced himself on a wife, it could not be rape.
Three months after that, following an argument with my husband that turned into something that wasn't considered rape any more, I was pregnant with my daughter. I left him the day I got the test results. Less than a year later, divorce was permitted only if the husband initiated it, and the custody of children always belonged to the husband. I made it out just in time.
The cause of all of this change in our world? Paeolate. It has brought such sudden wealth to this planet – wealth concentrated in the hands of a few corporations filled with men, who are now using their power and wealth to build their vision of a utopia. For themselves." ~
~ "It's now legal for a man to have more than one wife, because every woman deserves a 'protector', and some men can 'protect' more than one at a time. Don't miss the sarcasm in my statement." ~
~ "I don't know how to stop this madness. Little by little we are losing our rights, and it's always done in the name of protecting women from this danger, or that bad influence, and no one, man OR woman, objects. The money rolls in, and everyone gets a house, or an autocar, or more food, and everyone thinks it a fair exchange for their freedoms." ~
~ "I spent another week working with the orphans again. I used to be so proud that our planet provided a refuge for so many children who'd experienced horrible things and lost their families in the endless conflicts on other worlds. The refugee program was an example for others to follow. We took them in, healed their physical and mental wounds, raised them, educated them, gave them new families, and then sent them back out to the universe wherever they wanted to go. We've been able to take the kids who've experienced the worst of the worst, and thanks to Oblita, given their minds a chance to heal without the horrors of the past to plague them. As long as they take the supplement religiously when they leave, they do okay, and if they don't, they can come back here and we can get them right again." ~
The supplement?
~ "But, I'm not so sure this planet is the best one for them to come to anymore. Especially the girls. I feel like we're seeing less and less of them at the university each year. I don't think they're leaving the planet, either. Have they merely traded one hell for another? How many are imprisoned behind increasingly closed and locked doors?" ~
~ "A small victory. The official news sources deny it, of course, but rumors are everywhere that the Bureau of Interplanetary Affairs has put its foot down and will not allow refugee children to be resettled here any longer." ~
Lydia skipped through the diary to a date several years further along.
~ "I miss working at the university. I hear that the lecture halls are almost silent now that women aren't allowed there anymore. I'm thinking about trying to get my hands on enough textbooks to start teaching women at home, informally." ~
Women had taught at the university? Were they allowed to teach men?
~ "I'm in disbelief. Textbooks in our native language are almost nowhere to be found. Hard copies have disappeared and electronic copies have been deleted at every source that sold them. The only ones being sold now are in Br'ini – a language so old that no one speaks it anymore. Except it's being taught to the boys at the university, and I hear that new texts are written in it. Women are being completely cut off from learning.
My friend Jillan had been in charge of the medical side of the refugee program and wrote a number of pharmacology textbooks. Someone from the government came to her house the other day and removed all her files at gunpoint. Over the years, she had distilled many of our folk and herbal remedies into standardized medications, including the paeolin oxide supplement that's used with Oblita. Every reference is gone. She can't find anyone who still has copies. We've been told that medicine is now in the hands of men who understand modern science instead of "magic potions."
What have we lost? ~
Lydia read the passage three times in disbelief. There it was. Paeolin oxide, from paeolate. The supplement that allowed Oblita to keep working off the planet.
She'd found it.
A Very Bad Idea
Lydia stared at the sentence for an eternity. She read it over and over. "Paeolin oxide, from paeolate. The drug used with Oblita." At last, she remembered to breathe. She scrambled to her feet, the book clutched to her chest, and tore out of the room, not bothering to close the door or move the bookshelf back into place.
"James!" she yelled as she tore back through the stacks. "James! I found it!" She pulled up short as she realized she heard another voice. Quickly she tucked the diary on a shelf behind a Br'ini book and walked briskly to the front of the room.
"What the hell is the matter, girl?" Raym asked as she appeared, his face twisted with irritation. "And where the hell have you been?"
Instinct kicked in and she dropped to her knees. "I'm sorry, Master! I–I–"
"She was back in the stacks, looking for a book for me." James' voice was strong and sure and she relaxed. "The books aren't always in order. I give her the number, she locates it for me, and then I go get it and bring it back. Don't worry," he said at Raym's raised eyebrow, "at no time is she handling the books. As for the screaming," he turned to Lydia, "did you see that mouse again?"
"Yes, um, yes, sir," she whispered, grateful to him for thinking so clearly. "It scared me."
Raym made a dismissive noise and turned back to James. "So, anyhow, if you'd like to meet some other scientists, I'm having a gathering tomorrow night at my house. I'll just introduce you as my friend who's visiting. They'll have their slaves with them, so you can bring yours. If she can control her emotions."
Last week Lydia would have scarcely paid any attention to a comment like that. This week, though – she almost quivered with the effort needed to hold back a retort.
"We'll see," James said vaguely. "I'm kind of enjoying not going out at all right now, if you know what I mean!"
"Well, since you're enjoying having a slave so much I can probably arrange for another one for next week. My treat." He wiggled his eyes at James and moved to the lift. "Hope to see you tomorrow!" A moment later, he was gone.
As soon as the lift doors closed, James whirled around to Lydia, still on the floor. "What the fuck were you thinking, running out and screaming like that?" he demanded.
"I found it," she replied softly.
"Found what?"
"The drug that goes with Oblita. It's called paeolin oxide."
He stared at her for scarcely a moment before thrusting out his hand to help her up. Hand in hand, they dashed back to the room.
An hour later, they'd located three references to paeolin oxide among the Eluiim books, but none had the specific chemical composition.
"Isn't the name of it enough to tell you what it is?" Lydia asked, trying to understand what he needed.
"No, though we're a thousand times closer than before. An oxide can have one or two or three or more oxygen molecules attached."
The room was strewn with opened and abandoned reference books. Lydia wanted to gather them all up and absorb them through her skin.
James scrubbed his head with his hands. "Let's leave these here, and see if there's a
nything in the Br'ini books, now that we know what we're looking for."
It took the rest of the day, but they found a few references, mostly referring to it as an "unproven folk medicine." It was enough that James thought they could replicate the substance in the lab.
At last he looked up to Lydia, hovering over his shoulder to read, with a grin. "It's time to tell Raym about this. As for the other room – let's close it up for now, and talk about it tomorrow." He touched the screen on his watch. "Raym, I need to talk to you. Yes, it's important. Yes, it's about that. Okay. See you soon."
He looked up to Lydia. "Raym wants me to meet with his scientists." He looked apologetic and Lydia knew what he was going to say before he said it.
"And the presence of a slave wouldn't make sense." She nodded. "I understand."
They closed up the secret library, and made their way back up to his hotel room. James tossed his clothes on the end of the bed and changed into a fresh pair of pants and a crisp shirt. Lydia stared at the smooth muscles on his abdomen, the light dusting of hair on his chest, the darker hair that led down...
He cleared his throat and she came back to the present. He was grinning. "You can order room service if you want to. I'm not sure when I'll be back." He put his hand on the doorknob, then turned around and marched over to where she stood. He grabbed her and kissed her with a fierceness that made her knees weak. "This was all because of you. I swear, Lydia, I'm going to figure something out for you. For us." He let her go and was gone.
She sat down hard on the bed. No! No! No! Why did he say that? There was nothing he could do! Why couldn't he have just enjoyed this week and then let her go back to her master? In time she'd forget what had happened. He'd forget. They'd go back to life the same as before they met...
Memories of Surrender (Midrosian Chronicles Book 1) Page 12